Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Coordinator Tyler Sommers which was published in the The Edmonton Journal, The National Post, and The Epoch Times, July 12, 2012 and the Hill Times July 23, 2012

 

In the Supreme Court of Canada case about voting in a Toronto area riding during last May’s federal election, Elections Canada and some provincial elections agencies seem to be arguing that problems are inevitable instead of acknowledging that their current systems have significant weaknesses in ensuring that voters are voting properly at the correct polling station.

The robocall election fraud situation has revealed other weaknesses in fair election enforcement.

And these two situations are likely the tip of the iceberg, as there are more than 3,000 complaints that Elections Canada alone has received since 1997. Unfortunately, Elections Canada continues to refuse to disclose its rulings in those complaints, so the public has no idea whether enforcement of the rules has been proper and effective in the past six federal elections.

[ NOTE: To see info about the 3,000 complaints, go to: this news release — Democracy Watch will soon release details about a recent Elections Canada ruling that raises serious questions about its enforcement standards ]

Rather than defending systems with loopholes, and hiding enforcement records, Elections Canada and the provincial agencies should be disclosing details to prove their enforcement is effective, and pushing for stronger laws and more resources and training to ensure our future elections are fraud-free.

 

 

For more details about the changes needed to Elections Canada go to April 16 News release

Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Founder Duff Conacher which was published in the Hill Times, July 23, 2012

TORONTO—The Hill Times’ 12th Annual Terrific 25 Staffers Survey of people involved in federal politics was most revealing because the ranking criteria did not include “most ethical staffer.” If members of the public were surveyed, this would very likely be their most important criteria given that dishonesty, secrecy, unethical activities, lack of representation and waste consistently rank as the Canadians’ top concerns about government.

Instead, according to the survey, political staff are valued for being most discreet (i.e. most secretive), closest to the Prime Minister and most influential (i.e. among other things, most likely to change elected politicians’ decisions (including for lobbyists), and best at spin (i.e. most misleading), along with most knowledgeable and most experienced.

Would Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff Nigel Wright be named “most ethical?” The Conflict of Interest Act does not require (archive website) him to recuse himself from any general matter decision-making process even if it will directly affect his personal financial interests, or the interests of his family or friends or the dozens of companies in which his company, Onex, is invested, or the interests of the companies in which the two other private holding companies he owns are invested, or the two dozen or so other companies in which he own shares, or the other investments he placed in his so-called blind trust.

In fact, he has not disclosed any recusals from any decision-making processes in the Public Registry for the Act. That may be because federal Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has set up a system of so-called “ethical screens” to hide recusals by Cabinet ministers, staff and appointees, a system that violates Sec. 25 of the Act (which requires public disclosure of the details of all recusals).

What the ethics commissioner did, according to her public testimony by her before House committees, is just arrange for public office holders to recuse themselves from whole areas of decision-making, but not declare it. She has admitted more recently that this is not a correct approach, but is still only requiring disclosure of some of those recusals, again, according to testimony by her before House committees.

But, in any case, isn’t it reasonable to say that an ethical person would recuse him/herself from all decision-making processes that affect their personal financial interests, and would publicly disclose their recusals, even if a flawed law combined with a lapdog ethics commissioner do not require these actions?

As for Andrew MacDougall, director of communications for the Prime Minister, he “helps when he can,” according to Yaroslav Baran, a former Conservative staffer. Does he help everyone equally? Or does he give more help to people who have worked in the past for Prime Minister Harper, Conservative Cabinet ministers, and Conservative Party election campaigns?

If it’s the latter, that sounds very similar to giving preferential treatment which is not allowed under Sec. 7 of the Conflict of Interest Act (as Conservative Cabinet minister Christian Paradis found out recently, although because the act does not include any penalties for violations of its key democratic good government rules, and because Prime Minister Harper regularly ignores the Act and his own rules set out in the Accountable Government guide for ministers, Paradis remains an unpenalized Cabinet minister).

And in case anyone is wondering, these same loopholes and flaws (and others), and weak enforcement (archive website) by Dawson, also undermine the ethical standards set out in the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, and (even more so), the ethical standards set out in the Senate Ethics Code (in no small part because the Senate Ethics Officer is under the control of a committee of Senators).

And as for all other political staffers, except senior staff in the Opposition Leader’s Office, no ethics rules apply to them, and they are not required to disclose any personal interests (not even financial interests), so who knows how their actions would measure up to ethics criteria if such criteria were included in your definition of a “terrific” staffer.

Maybe they are all acting honestly, ethically, openly, representatively, and preventing waste all of the time. The public has a right to know whether they are acting in these ways (since we pay their salaries), but we won’t know until rules are applied to them requiring them to act properly, with full disclosure requirements, and independent enforcement by a fully-empowered, well-resourced watchdog with a strong enforcement approach (unlike the ethics commissioner), and the power to penalize violators.

Knowing how committed all of the federal politicians are to democratic good government, I am sure that the MPs on the House Procedural Affairs Committee will strongly recommend closing the huge loopholes and correcting the flaws and strengthening enforcement of the MPs’ ethics code when they continue their review of the code after Parliament opens again in September. And I am also sure that the House will make those changes right away.

I am also sure that the House or Senate or joint committee that reviews the Conflict of Interest Act soon (the review is already seven months (archive website) past its legal five-year deadline) will also make strong recommendations to close the loopholes in, and strengthen enforcement of, the act, and that the Conservative Cabinet will introduce a bill that will make those changes that will pass quickly and unanimously.

I am also sure that the Senate will clean up its ethics act sooner than later.

And I am also sure that an ethics law or code will soon be enacted to apply to political staffers, so that you can add it to your survey criteria.

I am so sure of all of these things because I have faith that federal politicians will do the right ethical thing very soon, even though they haven’t for the past 145 years, unfortunately. Better to hope than to despair, as someone said recently.

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Government Ethics Campaign

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Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Founder Duff Conacher which was published in the iPolitics, The Tyee, and Rabble.ca, July 19, 2012

As has happened almost every time (archive website) she has issued a ruling, federal Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson has again ignored evidence and rules in her ruling that Cabinet minister Tony Clement did nothing wrong when he endorsed a company in his riding in a promotional video and in two letters.

The Ethics Commissioner ruled in March that Cabinet minister Christian Paradis was guilty (archive website) of giving “preferential treatment” in violation of section 7 the Conflict of Interest Act setting the standard that it is illegal for ministers “to use their positions as ministers to provide greater assistance to their constituents than to other Canadians in relation to their own department or larger portfolio.”

In clear contrast, the Ethics Commissioner only warns Minister Clement not to do this again, instead of finding him guilty.

And in making that ruling about Minister Clement’s appearance in the video, the Ethics Commissioner ignored the letter that Clement also wrote that “encouraged an individual in Dubai to explore working with” the same company. The Ethics Commissioner also failed to disclose the text of that letter, and another promotional letter, that Clement wrote for the company.

In contrast, the Ethics Commissioner found former Minister of State Helena Guergis guilty of violating federal ethics rules for writing a very similar letter.

Given that giving such “preferential treatment” is a violation of the Act, it is by definition “improper” which means that the Ethics Commissioner should have also found Minister Clement of violating section 9 of the Act which prohibits acting in ways that “improperly further another person’s private interests.”

This ruling provides even more evidence that federal government ethics rules will not be properly and effectively enforced as long as Mary Dawson is the Ethics Commissioner.

 

 

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Government Ethics Campaign

Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Coordinator Tyler Sommers which was published in the National Post July 9, 2012

Federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is taking the great step of being an active good government watchdog by undertaking a review of the federal Access to Information Act. This is not only proper as she is required to report to Parliament about how the law is working, it is also needed.

Under the Act (ss. 75(1)), a House or Senate Committee is supposed to consistently review the Act, but nothing has been done for the past three years, and no past reviews have resulted in any changes to strengthen the law and enforcement.

The federal Conservatives did not include any proposals for changes in their so-called action plan for next three years for the international Open Government Partnership, and broke almost all (archive website) of their 2006 election promises to strengthen the law and enforcement.

Similar past broken promises and ineffective actions by politicians from all parties have resulted in repeated failures to strengthen the law over the past 30 years to help end the excessive, and often illegal, secrecy that is rampant in the federal government.

P.S. Michel Drapeau, quoted in the CP article last Friday-Saturday about the review, is completely incorrect when he claims that the review is outside the legal mandate of the Information Commissioner — please see subsection 39(1) of the Act set out below which gives the Commissioner the clear power to do special reports, in addition to her annual report to Parliament, that contain recommendations to solve problems with the Act and its enforcement.

Access to Information Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. A-1)

Special reports
39. (1) The Information Commissioner may, at any time, make a special report to Parliament referring to and commenting on any matter within the scope of the powers, duties and functions of the Commissioner where, in the opinion of the Commissioner, the matter is of such urgency or importance that a report thereon should not be deferred until the time provided for transmission of the next annual report of the Commissioner under section 38.

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Open Government Campaign

Major reforms are required, but government is stalling.

Thursday June 28, 2012

OTTAWA – Today, following the release of the fifth annual report by the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, civil society groups are calling the federal Conservatives’ 5-year old whistleblower regime a failure and calling for major reforms to ensure protection of Canadian whistleblowers.

“After five years of bureaucratic charades, taxpayers have essentially nothing to show for more than 30 million dollars spent on the Integrity Commissioner’s office and the associated Tribunal” said David Hutton, executive director of FAIR, the whistleblower charity. “Not a single wrongdoer has been sanctioned and not a single whistleblower has been protected. It is time for a root and branch reform of this law.”

Integrity Commissioner Mario Dion has thus far uncovered only one case of wrongdoing out of more than 320 complaints submitted over the past 5 years.  Due to loopholes in the law, the manager found to have misspent taxpayer’s money could not be disciplined because she had left her job for another outside the public service.  Dion declined to use the only remaining sanction available – to name her.

The government has also failed to initiate the five-year review of the Whistleblower Act, as legally required. “More than two months after it was supposed to begin, Minister Clement has still not announced the review or provided information on the format or timing.  The earliest date for a review is now the fall, well after it was to begin according to the Act” said Tyler Sommers of Democracy Watch. “If this government wants to protect honest public servants it will launch a comprehensive, open, and transparent review process immediately – and invite experts from other jurisdictions such as the UK, USA, and Australia, that are decades ahead of Canada in protecting truth-tellers.”

“This government rode into town on a white horse of transparency and accountability, with whistleblower protection the centerpiece of its election campaign” said Mr. Hutton. “It’s time to deliver on the ‘ironclad’ protection promised in 2006.”

– 30 –

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of Democracy Watch
Tel: (613) 241-5179

David Hutton, Executive Director, FAIR (Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform)
Tel: +44-798-104-6958 OR 01144-798-104-6958

Democracy Watch’s Open Government Campaign

Set out below is a op-ed by Democracy Watch Coordinator Tyler Sommers which was published in the The Epoch Times (English Edition) June 21, 2012

The ongoing refusal by federal government institutions to provide the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) with information he clearly has a legal right to examine, and needs, to do his analysis of spending makes it clear that the PBO must be given the power to penalize anyone who refuses his legal requests, and to subpoena information through a quick application in court.

As well, the PBO must be made independent of Cabinet (as the Conservatives promised in the 2006 election), with a fixed term of office and protection from being fired for arbitrary reasons.

Until these changes are made, the federal Conservatives will continue to produce dishonest spending and financial statements that hide what they are doing with the public’s money.

For more details about the changes needed to the PBO go to May 28 News release (archive website)

Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Founder Duff Conacher which was published in the Toronto Star and the Hill Times June 16-18, 2012

While it is dangerously undemocratic, if not clearly unconstitutional, for the Conservatives to have introduced a huge budget bill that includes dozens of amendments that have nothing to do with spending the public’s money, opposition parties are also to blame for this current fiasco.

There was a minority federal government from June 2004 until May 2011, and all the opposition parties had to do, some time in those seven years, was cooperate and pass a bill that clearly restricted budget bills to changes to spending.

Instead, as they almost always do, the opposition parties (including the Conservatives between 2004 and 2006, and yes even Jack Layton’s NDP) competed over who would get attention for complaining about government actions, attacked each other trying to better position themselves for the next election and, in some cases, tried to stop democratic reforms because they feared the ruling party or another party would be applauded.

If any of them would, instead of opposing and competing, propose working together to make government more honest, ethical, open, representative and waste-preventing, let alone to solve many other societal problems, they would not only make the other parties look very bad if they refused to work together, and be widely applauded by voters, they would also give the 40 per cent of Canadians who don’t vote a reason to vote.

One would think that political parties trying to get into power would want to do things to attract votes from 40 per cent of Canadians. One can only hope that at least one of them will soon break their addiction to corrupt, destructive politics as usual and start proposing solutions, and cooperative processes for implementing those solutions.

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Clean Up the System page

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